capriccioso

I took it with good humour and I'm sure everyone else did

Failure to qualify for the CL will strongly affect our attractiveness to South American players. The only reason they come to Europe is because of the CL these days, South American football has the wealth now to come close to if not rival wages offered to top players in Europe, especially since sponsors have a vested interest in keeping the best players at the club and can use their corporate billions to pay part of the wages. We shouldn't have a problem recruiting quality players under 25 who've never played CL football, or play for a team that's hovering around the CL level but can't quite get in.

How much have you seen of him, Henrique? I think most of us here haven't watched him play very little or not at all

Hamburg have the 3rd worst defensive record in the Bundesliga this year, as a unit they haven't defended well so perhaps Bruma is not at fault.

76 players? In 5 seasons?! Looking at that link, most of them were flops. The only ones who did well were Xabi Alonso, Reina, Sissoko, Agger, Kuyt, Torres, Arbeloa, Mascherano, Benayoun, and Skrtel. Which gives him a success percentage of 13.1%, thats rubbish; can you imagine what dross he would have purchased with the 400 million Roman gave us during the early years of his ownership?

Gallas was excellent until he started acting up. Arsenal fans would probably agree that he has a tendency to become a twat if he doesn't get what he wants.

He has an Indian cousin?

It's very, very stupid to charge high prices. The Bundesliga keeps prices low and their attendance's are through the roof; and sponsors don't like seeing empty seats and there are usually a few hundred of those every Champions League home game for us. $150 for a ticket to a game against a team that doesn't have an earth shaking reputation (if we were playing 1950s Real Madrid then it would have been acceptable to charge that much) is criminal.

Maybe we should get wheeler dealer 'Arry in, he's great at this sort of thing.And then sack him ASAP.

I withdraw that comparison then... SHM is quite the gentleman unless we're talking about Aussie Rules

That doesn't mean a lot. Avram Grant had these statistics as Chelsea manager: 56 games, 36 wins, 12 draws, 6 losses; at a win rate of 66.67%. Would you take him back?

You're right, we need a pragmatic manager. Villas-Boas and Guardiola are just too involved in their ideology to even consider developing a plan B. I have no problems with parking the bus to 4th for 3-4 years while we revamp the squad over that period and then try and be a bit more attacking and think about winning trophies.

He looks ready to collapse, its sad, and he's still probably got 20 games left in the season if you include his commitments with the Spanish team in Ukraine and then the Olympic squad.

We should be leaving Lisbon with an away goal, at the least. A 2-1 or 3-2 loss would be a pretty decent result, a scoring draw would do us fine as well. We can't afford a scoreless draw or another 3-1 result, though.

I found it to be less complicated, all we have to do is win, right? Possibly I'm just a lazy idiot who couldn't be bothered looking at fixture lists and projecting scores, points and goal differences where there are too many variables.

Right now, thats the easy way. Its simple and uncomplicated and doesn't rely on other results going our way.

Or we could take the easy way and win the Champions League and get the added benefit of booting Spurs out of the Champions League.

Not right now but IIRC we were in the summer.

Agreed.

Me neither

Maybe it was a mistake to let go of Anelka. We could have rocked them with the potent Anelkalouda combination. 2009/10 all over again

I just did

Sounds familiar to me. Jose leaves, team falls apart for a while, then there's a lengthy rebuilding process. At least Inter have sane ownership in the Moratti's.

Have you seen him play apart from that video Spike? If not, I would agree with you based on the little evidence we have, that he is a poacher. We can't be sure if thats the case, though, what if he just poached specifically in that game? Or what if he is an all round forward capable of poaching for some periods of the match and then linking up with the midfield?

I haven't given up yet, there's still a small part of me that deep down believes we can still do it. This is where di Matteo needs to show he's good enough to manage a top club, he's got to motivate the players far more than we, the fans are. He's got to make them believe 100% that anything is possible. That's all this squad really needs in the short run. A good kick up the arse and a few fighting words.